Monday, October 8, 2012

Why Obama Lost And Why He Won't Improve

Make no mistake, Obama failed miserably in the debate last week. And he couldn’t have picked a worse time with 67 million people watching on television (over 70 million overall), which is 15 million more than watched in 2008. He hurt his campaign badly. He has energized Republicans, Romney is pulling ahead in the polls in key states, and his side is demoralized. Let’s talk about his failure.

There have been a lot of attempts to explain why Obama failed. Chris Matthews said Obama looked unprepared because he hadn’t watched MSNBC enough and didn’t know how to fight those varmint Republicans. Whoopi Goldberg said he was distracted by his wedding anniversary. A great many blamed liberal Jim Lehrer for letting Romney dominate the debate – which makes Obama look even worse if the President needs a moderator to protect him. Several tried to blame Romney for cheating by trying to look moderate – even though Romney was solidly conservative across the board. David Axelrod claimed the problem was us, i.e. that Obama wanted to “honor the American people with honest answers to serious questions” rather than “dropping particular lines,” and apparently we just aren’t smart enough to appreciate that. Team Obama is blaming John Kerry for not being aggressive enough in the practice debates. Al Gore blamed the altitude.

The most delusional excuse is the idea that Obama did this intentionally. This seems to be morphing into the face-saving meme on the left, even though it’s ridiculous. The idea is that Obama wanted to appear thoughtful, presidential, and above-the-fray. Ok. . . then (1) if he meant to appear thoughtful, why did he look confused and uninformed, (2) if he meant to appeal presidential, why did he spend his time looking down at his podium, smirking like an angry jackass, and (3) if his game plan was to appear above-the-fray, why did he spend almost all of his time attacking straw-man presentations of Romney’s plan?

The truth is that Obama used a bad strategy because he didn’t understand what he was doing. Presidential elections involving incumbents are referendums on the incumbent. The electorate focuses on whether or not the incumbent deserves to be sent back to the job for another four years. . . that's it. That means the incumbent must explain why their record is acceptable and they must point out how they will make things better over the next term. Attacking Romney doesn’t give the electorate any reason to return Obama to office. And when Romney kept repeating the facts of Obama’s record, from unemployment to rising tax burdens to falling incomes to the rising cost of goods and healthcare, Obama needed an answer. He needed to explain how he had made things better and how his plan for the future would continue to make things better. He didn’t. Instead, he spent his time criticizing Romney.

I’ve seen this in court over and over, you need to know what the jury needs to hear from you and you need to deliver it. You can provide all the fireworks you want against the other guy, but it does no good if the jury doesn’t hear what they need about your case.

This is what Obama doesn’t understand because he is a neophyte. Looking at his history, there is nothing that tells me that he’s ever had to prove himself to anyone. Because of this, his debate performance was not unexpected or some freakish mistake, it was exactly what his history would predict. And to give you a sense of how unaware Obama is, which bolsters the case that he is a neophyte, Politico reported that Obama didn’t think he’d lost the debate until his aids showed him the tape. Few experienced, talented public speakers would ever lose the crowd and not realize it.

So what to do next? That’s the funny thing. The advice Obama’s getting now, which he’s apparently taking based on his stump speeches since the debate, are to attack Romney harder. They want to see him attack Romney as hating Big Bird, for the 47% comment, and for Bain Capital, which is the silver bullet they think Obama just hasn’t mentioned enough. //rolls eyes...

Of course, that’s absolutely the wrong advice. If Obama wants to win this election, he needs to do the one thing he’s never done before – he needs to convince a skeptical public that he knows what he’s doing. I see no evidence that he knows how to do that, and even worse, I see no evidence that he intends to do that. To the contrary, everything I see tells me that he and the Democrats are going all-in on the attack strategy.

In fact, the MSM seems to be gearing up for that. Politico has declared that Obama immediately “reset” his campaign and the race is off anew. Others are flat out carrying Obama’s water since they now realize he won’t, and they’re basically running Obama-campaign talking points. You’d be amazed, for example, how many MSM outlets are suddenly running with this 47% thing all over again as if Romney keeps saying it. And dozens of articles are being written about Obama suddenly being “energized.” Little is being said of the polls showing Romney taking a statistically significant lead in the polls these same outlets have been trumpeting for weeks now.

They can hang their hopes on Obama’s new energy if they like, but all the energy in the world won’t help when you have the wrong plan, and Obama has the wrong plan.

87 comments:

A ravenous leftist cabal of media and elite rich invesotrs are putting a boot to his posterior. Problem is you can't teach someone to look Presidential or to know what they are doing by beating it into them.

Also, I'm not worried about Biden except for the expectations game. People will expect Ryan to really wipe him out and I think Biden will just stick with the personal platitudes like you say and never give Ryan anything to take apart.

Indi, I'm sure they're desperately trying to teach him to look more presidential, but the problem is that (1) he doesn't listen to others -- even Politico noted that he only takes his own advice (though they seemed to think that was good), (2) it's too much to learn this quickly, and (3) they're teaching him the wrong things. They're teaching him to get nasty and aggressive, whereas they should be teaching him how to connect with his audience.

I think he's going to be very aggressive in the next debate and he will come across as desperate.

Thanks DUQ. I've been saying since he first appeared on the scene that he was never what they thought he was. The Democrats were fools for picking him over Hillary. And this is what comes of that. He's got no real talents or skills and now he's facing somebody who does.

Ed, That's exactly right, he's got no skills. But they've built him up as this amazing guy who can do anything and it's just not true. Brit Hume said the same thing yesterday when said that Obama was never what the liberals thought he was and now that's becoming clear.

I think the "Obama doesn't care" is the first sign that they are looking to get really angry.

I am concerned about the Ryan thing for the same reason. A small loss will be considered a huge victory for Biden and all he has to do to keep the loss small is keep the whole debate muddled up.

Andrew, That's the problem. If Biden pulls Ryan down into the mud and just keeps things confusing, then there won't be a clear winner and suddenly all the leftists who insist Biden is a genius despite all the evidence to the contrary will say he won because he's stupid and he was expected to lose.

You might be right on the Obama doesn't care. I get the feeling they're still in shock and are grasping at straws.

Ed, I agree they're in shock and grasping at straws. I think they don't believe yet what happened and they think it was a fluke. If it happens again, then they'll see the truth and they will positively freak out!

Ed, That is the danger for Ryan and like I say above, I think Ryan needs to be ready to turn it back on Biden/Obama and blast them for the pain they've caused. That's the only counter to someone who is whining about some individual or another who won't do well under a particular policy -- you fire back with "who are you to talk about people getting hurt?!"

DUQ and Ed, I too think they are grasping at straws at the moment. I think the left genuinely doesn't understand what went wrong. They KNOW Obama is brilliant. They KNOW Romney is wooden, rich, and evil. Obama should have mopped the floor with him. They can't grasp why that didn't happen. So they are looking for all kinds of excuses. If he blows it again, then things will start to become clear for them.

I don't like the taste of crow, so I won't state this in absolute terms, but I just have a hard time considering that Obama would really go back to Bain and the 47%. How un-presidential would that be, going into the next round following exactly the advice given by the media? But then, I'm speaking from the land of the sane right now. Obama defies even my best devil's advocacy.

For those not accustomed to watching (enduring) SNL, here is a clip you can enjoy: LINK

tryanmax, The thing is, Obama's stump speeches all weekend have been about Bain, the 47% comment and Big Bird. He's even running more ads here now in which he claims Romney used Bain to send jobs to China and he is trying to juxtapose the 47% comment against Romney claiming to support the middle class -- he also basically calls him a liar over and over.

Obama is universally getting advice from the left and his advisors to fight on these issues because they think this is where Romney is soft. So I would not doubt at all that he will make that a focus of his next debate (even though I think that's supposed to be about foreign policy).

It sounds stupid to us, but not to him.

Thanks for the clip, I stopped watching SNL years ago and never went back. I'll check it out. :)

trynamax, To go further, the problem is that his side really misunderstands what they need to do because they think Bush won by smearing Kerry. So they think they can win by smearing Romney. But there's a key difference. Kerry projected weakness at a time when people were still worried about terrorism and ongoing wars.

There is no such threat at the moment and people instead want to bring the troops home. This election will be about economics. And in that means Obama needs to find a way to convince the public that he can turn the economy around. Attacking Romney won't do that. But he really does believe he can win if he just makes Romney sound bad enough.

That's a bad strategy, but everything they've done in this election so far tells me that's his plan.

There was no better example of experienced excellence, Mitt, going against theoretical excellence, Barry. We saw a man who knows who he is, verses a man that allows others to project who he is. We saw an ambitious, descent, hard working man, verses a lazy, vain, self serving, self important ideologue. One was an adult, and one was the child. Barry is out of his depth, and it was apparent for all to see. “If” Romney/Ryan continue, which I see no reason for that to change R/R win big.

One caveat: Look for the establishment to coalesce, I believe many on both sides of the aisle would be okay with Barry’s reelection. I’ll bet Barry makes a comeback no matter how phony. Like allowing Barry to win a debate, etc.

Andrew, That would make sense if they couldn't admit what happened, so they did and then they tried to reshape that over the next week. I know the NYT called the debat "unhelpful" as if nothing happened. And you're right about the outpouring of angst from the left. They imploded last week and there's no way to hide that either.

Stan, I agree completely. It's strange to think that the President of the US has no real experience, but it's true. Romney has done a lot and has had to excel to get to where he is. Obama just had to wait as others pushed him along. The difference was obvious on stage.

I also agree that there will be a huge push to try to save Obama, unless Obama falls flat on his face in the next one too. If he does that, then the establishment will turn their attention to saving other Democrats from his implosion.

Andrew: I also think that they misunderestimated Romney's skills as a debater. And it sure doesn't hurt to have the facts on your side. They expected Romney to be the "wooden one" and he turned the tables on them. Obama came off as both bored and wooden. When Obama doesn't have a speech and a TelePrompter, he's just plain boring. Their calculation was that Romney would be better than McCain, but not much better. Boy, were they wrong. My schadenfreude levels are going right through the roof.

Lawhawk, I think that's true as well. I think they looked at Romney's primary debates and decided that he just wasn't great, so Obama would be more than a match for him. What they didn't notice was that Romney was getting better with each passing debate and his primary strategy was very different than his strategy now. In the primary, he just had to look like the best of the group and it made no sense for him to really try to shine. So now he's stepped up his game and Obama is wondering where this guy came from!

Andrew, typo in your second paragraph. I think you meant to say, "Chris Matthews hilariously said Obama...."

Don't know if anyone's noticed it, but the latest poll from Politico has the GOP with a 13-point edge in voter enthusiasm. Seniors are up, etc., while blacks, Hispanics, youth are all way down compared to '08. In fact, even though Obama is projected to snare a larger share of the Hispanic vote than last time (because whatever), so many fewer will be voting that it's numerically a wash. And also, at least half of this polling occurred before the debate.

I did notice that poll. I'm talking more about polls tonight/tomorrow, but all the polls are really shifting in Romney's direction and the 13% enthusiasm gap is huge... but consistent with polls over the last several months.

Doc, Thanks for the link. Interesting article. They say that he's failing in the three things he needs to do: (1) defend his record, (2) find some way to attack his opponent, and (3) give a vision of the future.

I would go further and say that he's not even trying to do 1 and 3, and he's concentrating entirely on number 2.

I read Romney's foreign policy speech at the VMI and he mentioned something that I am really upset with the MSM for not reporting.

Evidently after the Ambassador was killed thousands of Lybians held a rally stating "he was our friend" and "apologized" for what happened. They then went down to the terrorists compaound and burned it to the ground.

You would think that in the name of repairing relations with the middle east Obama would have recognized this act and thanked those Lybians directly for their support.

It is almost as if the foreign policy of Barack Obama is to screw up America's image.....

I like everything you say here, Andrew, but am still disappointed this race may be close enough to steal. They are trying hard to get people registered, early voted and everything else. I believe we are on the winning side and much more energized, but can't shake a bit of a feeling of dread because I know their people will stop at nothing. Chavez and Obama. The similarities are disturbing.

Indi, The MSM did mention that. I mentioned that here and I got it from the MSM. But too many conservatives were too busy wanting to believe that all Libyans are evil to be bothered to collect the facts, so it got ignored by most people.

That said, you are right that Obama should have mentioned that, but he was busy trying to pretend this was all about some film rather than about terrorism. I will be very happy when our foreign policy is based on reality again rather than doublespeak.

I saw Romney's speech too and it was quite good. He's impressive all around.

I can't believe you missed the most obvious reason Obama lost: the mysterious, magical, Morman Hanky.

I was concerned about the Romney campaign but I think I see his wisdom. Spend time defining who Obama his and what his failures are and allow Obama to hit him early with garbage. The debate was a change in tactic and it was timed very well. Basically, here is the problem and here is what I propose to fix it. Obama is still stuck in phase 1. Obama will get dirtier as well (hard to believe). Expect some Oct/Nov surprise that will be mostly BS but get HUGE play. We should hold a contest on what that will be. Sexually molested a secretary? Elmo? Ran over a squirrel carrying a code pink sign? He doesn't believe in Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo?

Doc, the Washington Post is saying something similar--namely, that Obama may be "overrated" as a candidate--and I think it validates something else Andrew said some time ago. If the MSM ever became convinced that Obama would fail them, they would throw him under the bus as an alternative to throwing their ideology under the bus. And here we are.

Koshcat, I have paid no attention to the Magical Hanky bit, but I know the left is incensed about it. Amazing.

I think you're right about Obama and Romney's strategy. Romney's strategy was to slowly set Obama up for the debates. Now Romney can unleash all these attacks Obama simply has no response for. At the same time, Obama's attacks are played out because he's been trying them for so long without success. So Obama is out of ammo.

That said, as you say, he will get a lot dirtier in future debates and future television ads. I know Obama's ads here are getting to be really nasty. But it won't work because Obama still is giving no reason for anyone to vote FOR him!

T-Rav, I am seeing more and more of that suddenly, with the MSM taking a hard look at Obama and not liking what they see. As you point out, I've said before that they will turn on him when they finally realize that things have gone wrong and I think they may be on the verge of that. I'd say that if he falls on his face in the next debate, then he may be facing a full scale rebellion on his MSM flank.

Andrew, I think there will be attempts to play it both ways. Maybe not by next week, but there have already been commentary pieces here and there about how Obama is just too smart/talented/nice for the job of President and that he might be better suited to lead elsewhere (hinting at the UN). I agree, they will also go insane, but I expect the "win by losing" thing to be a part of it.

I also meant it somewhat as a commentary about the predictive nature of political comedy directed at the left as of late. It's almost impossible to lampoon them b/c they make reality of the most outlandish jibes.

tryanmax, Good points all around. The left (MSNBC in particular) have merged reality with parody and it's impossible to tell the two apart anymore.

And you're right, there will certainly be a sour grapes argument made by many on the left. But I think the overwhelming response will be outright rage. They will accuse Romney of stealing the election and then will turn against Obama for failing them in one way or another. It won't be pretty.

I'm hearing that too, about him being too good for us and how he's ready to move on and fix the rest of the world. That's an amazing argument if you think about it that somehow being President of the US, leader of the free world, shaper of the world is a job that's too dull and too simple for someone... especially someone who not only never fixed a single problem here, but made things worse.

Joel, I haven't seen the Pew poll, but I have seen the Battleground poll. Those are bad, bad numbers for Obama. But it's all part of the same pattern that I'm seeing. This debate may have been the straw which broke the camel's back.

What's worse for Obama, he can't do anything about it until the next debate in two weeks and even then it's about foreign policy, which will make it hard for him to really blast Romney.

Basically, he's going to bleed for three weeks before he gets a chance to really turn this around unless something unusual happens.

T-Rav, It is awesome. It's all kinds of awesome and if the polls do what I think they are doing, then it's going to get even more awesome. I think we're on that breaking point where the bandwagoners are starting to commit and that will be the end of Obama.

If the MSM had done their jobs for the last 4 years and had challenged Obama along the way on ANY level, he might have been more prepared. He has not been challenged once not even by the comedians. He may lose because the MSM treated him like Saudi royalty and not like "The President" who should be questioned at every turn.

As for Ryan, he needs push Biden hard on policy and facts, but not beat up on him. Ryan doesn't want to look like he's bullying the confused VP. He may make Biden cry and that would be bad.

Bev, That's the real irony. The MSM is partially to blame here for letting Obama skate through. If they had challenged him on his screw-ups then not only would he know where he screwed up and he would have had a chance to explain those before, but he also would have been accustomed to handling criticism. He still can't handle criticism. You see if every time Romney hit him with some attack, Obama looked like no one had ever spoken to him like that before... because they hadn't.

I'll be curious how Ryan responds to Biden. I've got something in the article tonight about how I would respond to Biden, but we'll see. I think it will be more difficult than people believe.

Yeah, I don't think it's foreordained that this VP debate will be a cakewalk. For some people, Slow Joe's idiocy comes off as endearing, whereas to us it comes off as...well, idiocy. I've read that the debate people are trying to get him to be aggressive, which I think is a mistake. If I were him, I would play the bumbling, benign uncle, which may be his only chance of getting through this.

T-Rav, I think he approach will ultimately be to attack Ryan with unprovable anecdotal stories about people he claims to know who would be hurt if Ryan's plans came into law. That's my guess. If he tries to get too clever, then he's in trouble.

I don't remember the press talking about anything but a You Tube Video but I get a lot of breaking news from the radio. Fox news if they had an article on their web site I missed it. You would think however that this would be plastered over the news everytime the subject was mentioned.

And it would have been if Obama was talking about it. Instead it was "uh... You Tube Video, not my fault".

Indi, It was covered extensively. It just didn't fit with either ideology so it got ignored by the people who wanted to make a political issue out of the killing. Thus, the right ignored it and blamed all Libyans and the left ignored it and blamed some idiot in California.

But it was there to read. First, there were open condemnations of the attack by average Libyans, then there was a rally. Then this came out about them going after the terrorist's compound. But like I said, nobody wanted to hear it because it didn't fit the narrative the two sides were using.

I usually check articles either Breitbart or Fox news and sometimes Drudge but everything seemed to be about some You Tube video. Plenty of stories on that. Have not had a chance to watch the TV at all lately.

Indi, Breitbart, Fox and Drudge are all the same source basically. They are slanted right and promote the same talking points. You're only getting 1/2 the picture. I check out variety of news outlets including the AP directly.

the granddaughter of a previous housekeeper heard her grandmother talk about a safe in Mr. Romney's study. One day, while she was cleaning the study the safe was opened and she saw them. Shortly after she told her granddaughter this incredible story, she died mysteriously at the age of 92. The tablets, thought to be made of solid gold, we lost shortly after they were transcribed by the angel Moroni. Some have accused the LDS church of having and hiding these tablets in a secret, highly secure cave somewhere in Utah. The Obama campaign commented quote "this clearly shows that Romney is a fabuously wealthy and greedy man out of touch with the common citizen." The Romney campaign refused to comment.

I think the more important ramifications are taking place now. The Old Guard Media have abandoned any and all pretense of impartiality and have thrown themselves wholly into the tank with The Won. That price will be high. No matter who wins the next election (I'm going with Romney FTW) the real losers will be the MSM for the black eyes they are continually giving themselves – and their excuses have earned them the contempt they deserve.

Su Wei, I think the MSM is really hurting their already-bad reputations a lot at the moment. At some point, they will need to try to salvage what they have. I think that happens when they realize he's lost, then they will savage him in the hopes of getting people to think they are fair.

I would also expect to hear a lot about us being racist for voting him out of office. But frankly, that line no longer works.

the interesting note a friend of mine brought up in discussion a few days ago is this: Romney essentially threw his campaign strategy to Obama back in 2008, shortly after Obama won, Romney offered some interesting advice to Obama while being interviewed by CNN reporters. What's odd is how Obama didn't pick up the queue that Romney's outline of his campaign came right in this interview from November 7, 2008.

3) Work on minimizing the bailouts (They're not neccessary to prevent the domestic auto industry from going out of business, and they won't prevent bankruptcy)

4) Make education a priority in the budget

Interestingly enough, as my friend pointed out, Obama's breaking #4 was what Romney hammered him on Solyndra, he could have spent the bailout money to easily pay salaries and benefits for a far greater number of teachers than the 100,000 promised using the amount of money from the green energy bailouts. This also addressed #3 being broken as well.

If you also consider #1 and #2, both are issues that Obama will have Romney going after him for on foreign policy. Slow response on the Libya and Egypt attacks allowed plenty of misrepresentation and if earlier response occurred, there would be a more optimistic picture painted (work in progress to prosecute the offenders, for instance) I could see #2 with possible implications that Obama, in a way, could be argued to have auctioned off positions related to foreign policy, such as Ambassadorship, or also the possibility of asking why certain cabinet members haven't been replaced for incompetence, such as Napolitano.

Either way, the insight was interesting how Romney essentially gave almost four years notice of how he would go after Obama, much less evaluate his job performance.

obiwan, That is a fascinating analysis! It really does look like Romney diagnosed what would become Obama's failures and is now hitting him directly on those!

I've got to say that I was very skeptical of Romney when the primaries started, but he has really prove himself both to be a genuine conservative and also a really gifted politician. He's smart, he grasps what works, and he thinks strategically. Obama is way over matched here and has no idea how badly.

His foreign policy speech today is going to work really nicely in the debate too. My first thought about him giving that speech was that it was a mistake to highlight what he would talk about before the debate, but then I realized, he's now giving the media time to do their best to take him down, so he will know the best Obama can come back with. It's really a pretty brilliant strategy and it takes a LOT of nerve to do it.

I think Romney's also hit upon one of the rules on how to deal with the media: If you're going to be demonized by them anyway, take the opportunity of being put on camera to blast away with your talking points.

T-Rav, Very true. He's been relentless about putting out his talking points and staying on message and it's driving the media nuts because they're not used to Republicans playing that way. In the past, the Republicans always caved and played the media's game. Not Romney.

If Obama wants to win this election, he needs to do the one thing he’s never done before – he needs to convince a skeptical public that he knows what he’s doing.

We're in an "emperor's new clothes" scenario. Everyone panders to Obama and he believes his own press. The liberal media spin machine continually attacks Romney and the public never gets a chance to see the other candidate in other than the demon role that MSNBC and the other parasiticmedia types portray.

Comes the debate, and it's not the way the media said that it was. And the emperor is naked as a jaybird.

LL, I think that's exactly what we're looking at. They've been pushing this idea that he's perfect for so long now that their entire side was caught entirely unaware when he fell on his face and they are having a hard time understanding what could have gone wrong.

Now they want him to be the guy they thought he was, but he's not, and there's nothing he can do to become that guy.

The problem I have is this. most of the news I get is from the AP feed on the radio as this is what I have the most time for. fox probably had a story on this but it wasn't emphasized on the front page long enough.

During that time frame every time the feed came on which was three times in my morning drive and at least one at lunch and twice in the evening drive home the same story was repeated for a week. Muslim outrage to a Youtube video. There were some newe things added like the director was a Christian (no mention of an Egyption Coptic sect) but for the most part same story.

After two three weeks the story changed to Romney's 47% and again various useless versions of this.

I guess what I am ticked off at was had the AP highlighted this story even if for only one or two days, I'd have known about it. The 47% crap lasted a month and it got to the point I'd turn the radio down for a minute just so I did not have to hear about it again.

I don't watch TV news and I really don't want to have to go search through political sites to get it and sorry I decided after seeing the Juanita Broderick interview where they admitted they bought the exclusive rights to the story and purposefully held it until after the impeachment trial was over that I would never let the leftist media propragandize to me again and I seriously doubt they gave this story any more air time than Fox anyways. I have not watched ABC, CBS, CNN or NBC since that time. Strictly cable.

Indi, That's why you need to look beyond what you are fed in the news presentations if you want to be informed. But I can tell you, this was not hidden. It was on the front page of Yahoo, it was in the British papers and the German papers, and it appeared at the AP page. It just didn't show up on the networks because they are about spin, not news.

Yeah, that's been going on for a while, but it's really escalated lately. They were even talking about a potential shooting war about a week ago. I doubt it will come to that, but it's quite a potential mess.

Remember how I said that SNL joke might come true? [Is winning the election even that important? The answer might surprise you.]

Well, the latest cover of TIME Magazine has a cover story called "The Next Leader of the Unfree World" with a subheading which states "Why China's Xi Jinping will be the new President who really matters."